How to Run a Successful Campaign on Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that has raised more than $562 million dollars for over 39,000 projects.

Since Kickstarter was founded in 2009 it has been the go-to crowdfunding platform for entrepreneurs. Kickstarter lets you circumnavigate traditional forms of raising funds; as such, they claim no ownership over the projects that come from the funding, and they take a 5% flat rate of the funds raised.

Goal: $100,000 Raised: $10,266,845 Backers: 68,929

The Campaign:

Pebble is by far the most successful Kickstarter project of all time. If you haven't heard of Pebble already (unlikely), it's a smartwatch that's infinitely customizable. You can connect it to an iPhone or Android using Bluetooth to sync calendars, alerts, emails, even incoming calls. Within hours of going live, the project broke its $100,000 funding goal. Then it kept going, and going, and going until it reached over $10 million dollars. Pebble is pre-selling their watches for $150US.

What They Did Right:

"Probably the best thing we did with our Kickstarter page was our 'use cases'. We knew that no one really wakes up in the morning with a desperate urge to buy a smartwatch, so it was our job to figure out exactly how to explain to future users how they will be able to use Pebble. I asked my mom a lot about what she thought; turns out it's important to target your marketing for people who probably aren't your core user base - you want to expand beyond that."

What They Did Wrong:

"We haven't done too much wrong, but over time the largest lessons we've learned have been just from launching products and listening to users about the problems they have and improving from there!" (Eric Migicovsky, Founder)

Goal: $3,000 Raised: $19,485 Backers: 275

The Campaign:

Panda sunglasses are like TOMS Shoes but for your face. They are ecofriendly sunglasses handcrafted from sustainable bamboo, and for every pair you purchase, Panda will provide an eye exam and a pair of prescription glasses to someone in need. Vincent Ko, the founder, decided to post his idea for Panda sunglasses to Kickstarter in late 2011 with a $3,000 goal. He surpassed his goal by over 600%. The funds allowed Ko to start production with a woodworking shop in China. You can buy Panda glasses for $120US which includes free shipping and a lifetime warranty.

What They Did Right

"We offered a special offer to the first 100 backers of particular pledge amount, which allowed us to encourage the community to get involved early on in our Kickstarter project. Also, we made the choice to use Shopify so our webstore set-up was extremely easy and quick. This way people interested in pledging on Kickstarter were able to come our site before they pledged and see a well established ecommerce presence. Also, we leveraged the discount feature to seamlessly fulfill pledge prizes. We provided all or backers with unique coupon codes and allowed them to pick the exact style they wanted which eliminated all potential errors with copying information and it saved us countless hours. Now, we leverage Shopify for our wholesale business as well. I think this is something that is overlooked, the backend of Shopify makes it super easy to integrate both an ecommerce store and wholesale ordering system into one online destination."

What They Did Wrong:

"If we were to do another Kickstarter projectI would make providing updates to people who had pledged a top priority. We only provided 3 updates during the whole process. My advice to others in Kickstarter projects is to provide transparent and consistent updates. Your pledgers will appreciate knowing you're on track with your project and even if there are delays they will appreciate knowing about them proactively.

Regarding our online store, we tried our best to replicate an in person shopping experience. When we first launched our ecommerce store we lacked high resolution images from multiple angles. We found that many Kickstarter pledgers, although they loved the concept of our company, had trouble picking out the best style for them. Given that Shopify makes it extremely easy to add several photos, and the template editor enables easy implementation of product video we were able to quickly add several high resolution images of the sunglasses, pictures of people wearing the sunglasses, and even a 360 degree video. With all these resources customers were easily able to pick out which style was best for them. Even today, as we provide more visual references of our products we noticed a higher level of conversions."

Goal: $9,500 Raised: $306,944 Backers: 4,818

The Campaign:

Dave Jackson and Dave Petrillo are two mechanical engineers from New Jersey. They developed polished stainless steel beans that regulate the temperature of coffee and called them Coffee Joulies. Their product is one of Kickstarter's most successful campaigns to date. They've been covered by Gizmodo, Mashable, WIRED, and Popular Science. Coffee Joulies also won our Build-A-Business Competition grand prize of $100,000 cash plus VIP trips to meet Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Seth Godin. You can buy a 5-pack of Coffee Joulies for $49.95US.

What They Did Right:

"The best thing we did was to allow potential customers to opt-in to our email list between ending our Kickstarter campaign and starting to sell using Shopify. We didn't even know it at the time, but building and using a solid email list is one of our companies most valuable assets. After kickstarter ended we continued to get a ton of traffic to our site. Since we were busy fulfilling Kickstarter orders, we weren't selling or even pre-selling any Joulies for several months. Instead, we had a compelling opt-in email box that would notify you when Joulies were ready to order. When the time came to sell again, sending emails to this list was easy and of enormous value."

What They Did Wrong:

"Before we opened our Shopify store, we relied on shared hosting that didn't keep up with our sites traffic. We didn't know what our real traffic numbers were like on Kickstarter, and we also didn't really have a clue what levels of hosting were required to host and protect against traffic spikes since it was all behind the scenes during Kickstarter. When we did get spikes, like when a story about us got syndicated on Yahoo! homepage for 12 hours, our 'unlimited' shared hosting crashed within minutes and we lost hundreds of thousands of unique viewers. Bummer." (Dave Petrillo, Co-Founder)

Goal: $3,000 Raised: $3,439 Backers: 89

The Campaign:

Eddie Tsai used Kickstarter to validate the demand for a moustache tie clip before investing money. Tsaiclips are forged from solid brass and coated in chrome steel or gunmetal, and they sell for $35US.

What They Did Right:

"Publicity really gave us credibility and was the turning point for our Kickstarter campaign. Once we got on one big blog, the snowball effect took over and the next thing you know we're featured on big sites like Uncrate, Cool Material, and Handlebar Magazine. After Kickstarter, Shopify allowed us to take our project to the next level and truly become a sustainable business. Both of these tools, Kickstarter and Shopify, really made it easy for a creative person to make a professional presence and add an amazing amount of credibility to their project."

What They Did Wrong:

"Something I really regret was taking a traditional approach to promoting a non-traditional product. We started off using Google Adwords and were only targeting popular keywords like 'men's dress shirts', 'ties', 'tie-clips', and even some fashion labels. Our strategy was to go for quantity (we wanted lots and lots of clicks) instead of focusing on relevancy. I think we really burned a lot of money by advertising to the wrong crowds. We should have spent more time learning Google Adwords and Analytics. Also we haven't been keeping in touch with our customers - we should really be utilizing our e-mail list." (Eddie Tsai, Co-Founder)

Goal: $15,000 Raised: $28,303 Backers: 578

The Campaign:

Rob Ward and Chris Peters solved a dilema of epic proportions: Having a cold beer but no way of opening it. These two Australians asked themselves, "what's the one thing people have on them at all times?" The answer? Your cell phone. Solution? A sturdy iPhone case beer bottle opener. Confirmation that their idea was a hit came as soon as they listed Opena on Kickstarter. Opena garnered 50% of its target funding in the first week. You can buy Opena in two different colors for $39.95US each on their Shopify store.

What They Did Right:

"One thing that really worked in our favor was making sure our online store was 100% ready to go live as soon as our Kickstarter project finished. We received a heap of press on the last day of our funding period and knew tons of people would be going to our Kickstarter project page only to find that the project had ended. Not wanting to lose all those potential backers we re-directed them to our ecommerce store to allow them to pre-order our products. We did this for both our Kickstarter projects (the Opena Case and the Quad Lock Mounting System) and found that the period between the end the Kickstarter project and the date we shipped could bring in just as much, if not more revenue than from the Kickstarter project."

What They Did Wrong:

"The one big mistake we made which could have cost us a lot more than it did involved our credit card payment gateway. Payment gateways are a pain to set up and can be a little complex. Without going into to much detail we were informed at the time that our particular payment gateway allowed us to authorize the credit card but hold off on actually processing the payment for a period of up to 30 days. Once the 30 days were up we we're informed that we could re-authorize the card to give us another 30 days before we accepting the funds. In theory this would have allowed us to take orders but not charge the customer until we were ready to ship. We decided this was the right thing to do for our customers and is how we processed orders during the first month of taking orders. On day 29 we tried to extend the authorization period of the first orders and found that the payments had expired! We had almost a full months of orders and no way of processing the payments. Not a great way to start the week. We had no option but to cancel the orders and try our best to get the customers to re-order by emailing them and offering various incentives such as a discount if they re-ordered. In the end we managed to recover around 70% of the expired orders which wasn't too bad but it was an expensive lesson." (Chris Peters, Co-Founder)

Goal: $75,000 Raised: $153,585 Backers: 525

The Campaign:

Ramos Alarm Clock was founded by a group of young engineers outside of NYC. It's an alarm clock that is beautifully constructed with four glowing nixie tubes that display the time in a very unique way. The clock also comes with a wireless alarm deactivation panel that will get you out of bed to turn off the buzzer. In February 2012, they launched their project on Kickstarter where they received over 400 orders in a month and a half. Ramos clocks range from $200 - $800 and they're currently up for pre-sale. Expected delivery: September 2012.

What They Did Right:

"We seemed to have succeeded in generating a good amount of interest. We made it on the front page of Yahoo!, BBC, lots of tech blogs, and a bunch of news outlets. We even got made fun of on Saturday Night Live! I think having a project that so many people can relate to helped us in getting people to talk about us, regardless of whether they wanted to buy the product or not. I also think Kickstarter served us well in being a reputable and visible platform for us to start our project from. I don’t know if we could have generated that much buzz if we had launched elsewhere. Setting up a store very quickly after the Kickstarter campaign was over was also a very good idea. Right after the Kickstarter project closed, we were able to catch the spillover of interest in our own store, that we simply would have lost if we didn’t have a storefront in time. With Shopify, we were able to get up and running in very little time, and concentrate most our efforts on running our business, and not on how to make an online store."

What They Did Wrong:

"This whole project has been a learning experience for all of us involved. Planning is always a struggle, especially when the future is so uncertain. We’ve made decisions that were based on a mindset used to dealing with prototypes. One thing we’re constantly being reminded of is doing something once or twice is completely different than doing it 500-600 times. We offered things to customers at the onset of the project that seemed easy to do, but ended up adding a great deal of complexity to the manufacturing process. I would recommend a serious analysis on how to simplify your product and keep variations to a minimum when starting out on launching a mass produced product. Even things like handling communication of different needs for 2-3 hundred people is no easy task." (Paul Sammut, Co-Founder)

Goal: $5,000 Raised: $5,675 Backers: 159

The Campaign:

Jesse Phillips was disillusioned with his computer science degree and became determined to save himself from working in a cubicle for the rest of his life. He semi-quit his day job, began a Kickstarter campaign to help fundraise the development of a gorgeous whole year calendar. The calendar is big (27" x 39"), it's printed on premium quality, cream colored, uncoated card stock, and has a beautiful vellum finish. You can buy the calendar at a discounted price of $19.00.

What They Did Right:

"Our product is an inexpensive niche product. Therefore, we couldn't afford to spend a ton on marketing. We had to get customers for super cheap or free. So, early on, I started using social media (my own personal accounts I had built) to spread the word. This had limited success. What was really helpful for us was finding bloggers to review our product or do giveaways of our product. Because our product is design heavy and productivity related, we were a good fit for design or productivity blogs. I just emailed them, asked if they liked our product, sent them a free sample, and offered to give their readers a discount code (thanks to the handy discount code feature on Shopify). This was amazing for us because it costs only time to send an email and we would usually make between 10 and 50 sales from a blog. The more exposure we got, the more people saw it, they more popular the product was. Before spending hundreds or thousands on an ad campaign or mailer, I suggest using blogs & giveaways to spread the word."

What They Did Wrong:

"I've made lots of mistakes. That's what you do when starting a business - it's how you learn. Mistakes are NOT a bad thing (usually), they are an education. In other words, don't delay starting just to avoid all mistakes. You'll never have all the information and make the perfect decisions, so it's better to do your research, then jump in and make some mistakes and learn from them! One mistake I made is still haunting me today -I didn't do any consumer research with my product, if I had, I would have learned that many people prefer a dry-erase calendar. So I've missed-out on thousands of sales because the product is unusable by several people that otherwise would be interested. I'm going to make a dry-erase version next year, but will they ever come back to find-out? Probably not. If I had simply taken the time to put my product in front of people and get feedback, I would have created a much more usable product. Instead, I was too scared of what people thought, that I just decided to launch on Kickstarter and not ask for opinion. Now, it's definitely true that you can't just give people whatever they say they want (because a lot of times what they say they want and what they buy are different things) but, again, if I had known that many people really want dry-erase, I would have gotten lots more sales." (Jesse Phillips, Founder)

Goal: $9,000 Raised: $30,329 Backers: 570

The Campaign:

David Murray has run a t-shirt company called SEIBEI for the past few years. He designs and manufactures silly and weird tees and onesies. Not long ago his van and all of his equipment were stolen. David created a bunch of special designs and offered them as Kickstarter exclusives in order to raise some funds and get back on his feet. SEIBEI reached its goal of $9,000 in two days, and it didn't take long for his Kickstarter campaign to reach a whopping $30,329.

What They Did Right:

"I've worked in the printing industry for years and know how to keep costs low (not by cutting corners, but by doing certain parts of the work myself, offering multiple colorways of the same design, etc), so I was able to give everyone a lot for their money while still getting my business back on its feet. I worked it out so that pretty much every shirt that sold through the Kickstarter paid for itself and (at least) one more to be printed, so I was able to print a bunch of inventory for myself that I sold at New York Comic Con shortly after the Kickstarter wrapped up. When I see tee companies offering stuff at full retail price (or more) on Kickstarter, I feel like they're missing the point. You need to reward people for going that extra mile and supporting your work."

What They Did Wrong:

"On the organizational front, I was a bit overwhelmed by the response to the project. My original goal was $9,000, but we ended up hitting over $30,000 which is still amazing to me. It took me about a week to put together surveys for all of the reward levels - they were difficult to format because of all of the variables involved (roughly 25 designs to choose from, sizes for each design), but I should have had these ready as soon as the Kickstarter wrapped.

The money also came in sooner than expected, so if I'd had the surveys done sooner, I could've started printing and shipping sooner. Between having a day job, preparing for New York Comic Con, and getting all the backer rewards together, I was in a little bit over my head (in spite of my best efforts and my meticulous spreadsheets detailing every order and its shipping status). Fortunately, people already knew from my project that I was just one guy, and were very understanding. Even if you've screwed up a little bit, a little communication goes a long way - I tried my best to be responsive and up front with people, though with almost 600 backers a few messages still managed to get past me. I'm actually still finishing up the last of the "sketch cards" from the project (small custom drawings added as a small thank you to all higher level tiers), which I'm ashamed to admit, but I told people I wanted to take my time with those and that they'd be a while.

Admittedly, with getting press for my work, I'm a bit of an idiot.I've always been of a "build it and they will come" mentality and have focused on making a quality product, so I could stand to learn how to promote myself better. I had lined up a few stories on the project in advance through t-shirt blogs who were familiar with my work, and managed to get some good press through organizations I was friendly with, but I didn't make a number of contacts until the project had actually begun. Considering that the project hit its funding goal within the first two days, by the time most bloggers saw my email about the project, I think some of the human interest of the story was gone (considering that I was clearly going to have a nice boost in getting my business back on its feet). I had friend-of-a-friend contacts at a pretty huge blog, and I'd heard through the grapevine that they were hesitant to cover me for this very reason. Still, the word of mouth on the project was huge, and I'm thankful that a lot of my fans and friends really put the word out for me, even when I'm not great at it." (David Murray, Founder)

Goal: $5,000 Raised: $10,021 Backers: 156

The Campaign:

Artist John T. Unger from Mancelona, Michigan, created a series of 600 sculptures called fire imps using 100% recycled steel. Each Fire Imp is a beautiful one of a kind piece that is signed by the artist. You can buy a Fire Imp Sculpture on John's Shopify store for $150.

What They Did Right:

"What we did right for our Kickstarter campaign was very similar to what made Amanda Palmer's campaign hit a million dollars. I'd already cultivated a fan base as an artist and I'd spent many years building a reputation for helping other artists succeed. Also, I had a good story that was bigger than the project itself. In Amanda's case, her supporters want the music, but they also want to participate in the story of a new way to make records without the record industry.

My Fire Imp Sculptures were part of a much bigger story about artist's rights which gained a lot of attention online. At the time, my existing copyrights for my Sculptural Firebowl series were under attack by a company seeking to overturn the copyrights in Federal Court and make unlicensed replicas. I launched a project on Kickstarter to create 600 one of a kind sculptures from scrap steel left over from cutting the Great Bowl O' Fire. Using Kickstarter to create a huge body of new artistic work helped on two levels— it gave me the funds to reach a successful settlement protecting my rights, while at the same time showing that the essence of my work was artistic creation rather than utilitarian design. The sculptures would have done well on their own, but I think our goal doubled because people wanted to stand up for artist's rights."

What They Did Wrong:

"The biggest difficulty we had with our Kickstarter project was finding a good way to let backers select the particular sculpture they wanted from those available at each reward level. Each series of sculptures contained 100 different sculptures that shared a style and color but were otherwise totally different. It didn't make sense to have 600 reward levels, but there also wasn't a way to let backers choose their selection from within Kickstarter. What we ended up doing was posting all the sculptures to Flickr and letting backers reserve their choice via the comments. That was horribly inefficient for both us and the backers. Using Shopify to create individual listings for each sculpture is a much clearer, cleaner, easier and faster way to let buyers select a specific piece now that Kickstarter provided the funding to create the sculptures." (John T. Unger, Founder)

Goal: $20,000 Raised: $369,569 Backers: 1,546

The Campaign:

The founders of ZPM Espresso love two things: Coffee and technology. Their creation, the Nocturn, encompasses both by offering PID controls, programmable presets, adjustable temperature and pressure profiles, and even open-source software! The result is delicious high-tech coffee at a good price. hey hit their funding goal of $2,000 on day 2 of the campaign. Nocturn is on presale via their Shopify store for $349.99.

What They Did Right:

"The most important thing to us during (and after) our Kickstarter campaign was being ultra-responsive to questions and feedback. In our opinion, success on platforms like Kickstarter - where you're asking for money from strangers so you can do what you love - is about being honest and passionate, and convincing people that you're going to get the job done. We responded to thousands of emails during our campaign; we went out and talked to respected people in the coffee field; and we posted frequent updates about our progress to our Kickstarter page."

What They Did Wrong:

"There are a lot of things we would do differently if we could start our Kickstarter process over, but I think our biggest mistake was failing to do more publicizing of the project ourselves. We hit our funding goal on the second day of the campaign, and we ended up with 18 times the amount of funding we ever expected. When we went into it, we were basically thinking that we'd barely make our $20,000 goal, and that it would be a good way to get some beta machines out there and gauge interest in the market.

We never anticipated the huge response we got. This was great, but also meant that we basically spent our whole funding period scrambling to figure out how we were going to make these machines, starting at a completely different scale of manufacturing. We were worried about having too much funding too early on, because it put a ton of pressure on us as first-time manufacturers. We also knew that our original schedule would never be kept at the new scale. In retrospect, more funds always helps, and we should've rolled with it and tried to gather as much momentum as possible, rather than trying to slow things down while we tried to figure out logistics.

Goal: $500 Raised: $860 Backers: 11

The Campaign:

Cecilia sells her own handmade silver jewelry on her ecommerce store ShyViolet. To launch her new men's line, she decided to start a Kickstarter campaign to raise $500. With 18 days left her project was fully funded.

What They Did Right:

"First, I knew how the Kickstarter project fit into my overall business plan. Since I make primarily women's jewelry, I didn't have much of a men's market, and the few male customers I had were mostly buying for their wives or significant others. My Kickstarter project was a way of pre-selling a new line, mitigating my financial risk.

Additionally, I'm new to making cufflinks, and although I have some good ideas, I'm using this project as a way of gauging interest in different designs and doing market research. The Kickstarter forum also helped me reach a new men’s market that I hadn’t tapped before. The reward levels are pretty generous, much closer to wholesale prices than what I plan on selling my cufflinks for in the future, but it was a way of attracting backers. This was worthwhile, and I'm hoping to gain lasting value from the design input they'll provide. Additionally, I set my target amount as the minimum necessary for the project to be successful. It was enough to justify spending on supplies and enough to garner some interest, and small enough that it was likely to succeed."

What They Did Wrong:

"Next time, I'd do a much better job promoting my project before it started. I did some promotion, but again, most of my fans are women. While they were supportive, they weren't necessarily in the market for cufflinks (even for their husbands or significant others - more men buy jewelry for women than women buy for men!). It wasn't a terrible problem for me, since my project was small, but larger projects really need to take pre-kickoff promotion seriously.

Second, I should have thought about my reward levels a little more. The sterling silver cufflinks were priced about right for my purposes (although again, this is basically a wholesale introductory price for my line), but the copper and silver designs are proving to be more time-consuming. It would have been smarter of me to price them close to the sterling ones; although the materials costs are lower, the time cost is higher. Next time, I'll think through the rewards a little more thoroughly." (Cecilia Sells, Founder)

Thinking about launching a project with Kickstarter? Then make sure you check out our Kickstand Theme, an ecommerce theme designed specifically to help entrepreneurs who’ve just finished a successful Kickstarter campaign keep selling.

Join 446,005 entrepreneurs who already have a head start.

Thanks for subscribing

You’ll start receiving free tips and resources soon. In the meantime, start building your store with a free 14-day trial of Shopify.

42 comments

FulfillRite Kickstater Order Fulfillment

June 05 2012, 02:40PM

Great Article!! At Fulfillrite we posted a similar question in the forums:http://forums.shopify.com/categories/1/posts/107543

The feedback we’ve received has been that The Shopify platform has been a lifesaver in allowing a seamless, smooth transition from a Kickstarter project into ecommerce.

Shopify is a competitively prices e-commerce solution, and what customers like most is it’s simple, easy to use interface. (Shopify 2 might improve on that experience too). Another thing to remember is the Shopify support team which is above and beyond helpful, and that’s from a developer standpoint. This cannot necessarily be said about all others….

This is an extremely informative article. Very valuable to anyone thinking about or currently running a Kickstarter campaign.

Jack Lewis

June 05 2012, 04:45PM

Thanks for this writeup showing both what went right AND wrong. Crowdfunding is still creating quite a buzz. I peddle in more traditional waters helping startups go public with IPO, etc.

Jennifer

June 05 2012, 06:00PM

I had no idea all of these Kick-starter campaigns chose Shopify. Impressive guys.

Michelle

June 05 2012, 06:01PM

Woah Pebble is insane. Over $10 million that’s got to be a Kickstarter record. I wonder how much they’ll sell on Shopify.

Dave

June 05 2012, 06:06PM

The Joulies Dave said they’re “Design Engineers” rather than mechanical engineers as this article stated… Putting that aside, their shit doesn’t work.

Andrew Youderian

June 05 2012, 06:07PM

Great to see Kickstarter being used successfully for eCommerce! Also, fantastic case studies. Especially love the Pebble product – very cool. I’m fighting the urge to pre-order one. Not quite sure how I missed that the first time around…

Will

June 05 2012, 07:09PM

FYI… NeuYear doesn’t seem to be in business anymore. His website is no longer online.

Steve Chayer

June 05 2012, 08:32PM

What a fantastic read! Who ever created this deserves a big cigar. I too will be approaching Kickstarter and am darn determined to do everything right to increase my chances for success. This article has been a treasure trove of wisdom. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. If anyone is interested this is the project I will be entering: http://ploogn.wordpress.com/

Bethany

June 05 2012, 08:37PM

#Quality

Rick

June 06 2012, 09:51AM

Can someone explain how the shopify store works when the products are still in the ‘construction’ phase. So between the time a project is launched and the products are ready what is exactly on the shopify site and on the product pages? Are orders able to be placed or is there a ‘coming soon’ message?

Rick

Vincent Ko - Panda Sunglasses

June 06 2012, 11:16AM

Rick,

The best way to answer your question is to use Panda Sunglasses as an example. During our KS project when our product was in development we set-up a simple Shopify store with mock-ups of our product in development. Overtime we updated the product images at various stages or product development. You can set you inventory levels to 0 and it can either take pre-orders or backorders.

After our KS project ended we supplied all our backers with unique coupon codes. Using Shopify’s ‘Discount Code’ feature we were provided all backers with a unique coupon code. They would then pick the styles they wanted and use their unique coupon codes to order the sunglasses.

Hope that help!

Best,
Vincent
Panda Sunglasses
wearpanda.com

Cecilia

June 07 2012, 11:37AM

Thanks for including Shy Violet in this article! Great writeup! Congratulations to all the successful project organizers.

Dylan Blanchard

June 09 2012, 03:57PM

Brilliant article, Mark!
So many awesome stores, so much awesome art.

Love seeing the success of people and shops like this!

Ryan Meashaw

June 11 2012, 10:45AM

Great article, but am I missing something? How is this even possible? One of the main rules of KickStarter is that you can’t use it to raise funds for a business. Even using the funds to develop a product (which may fall under the rules as a “project”) is still working towards opening a business.

Just confused here because I’ve looked into KickStarter before but was turned away since it can’t be used for funding a business…

Mark Hayes

June 11 2012, 12:23PM

Hey Ryan:

From what I understand the major ‘no-no’ is raising funds in exchange for equity. The reason Kickstarter is legit is because the ‘prizes’ or thank you gifts are not related to ownership of the business.

What someone does with their project after they have raised funds on Kickstarter is up to them.

-Mark

Ryan Meashaw

June 13 2012, 05:01PM

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn’t aware of that, otherwise I would have tried using KickStarter long ago!

Myles

July 05 2012, 02:17AM

@Vincent Ko, and Shopify

Hi, I’m looking at shopify as an online store platform for a potential project to be funded via either kickstarter or indiegogo (as kickstarter doesn’t like people based outside of the US :( ).

My concern is that if we set up pre-order style rewards like used in some of the examples above, that it will be very difficult for us to integrate this into shopify. We ideally want a system just like Vincent mentioned, where we give a coupon to each individual who donates. We need this because we’d prefer if our customers pay shipping separately (having an international market).

However we don’t want to have to make hundreds of these coupons by hand – and the extra cost for the upgraded plan which has coupons (which would be the only extra feature we use from that plan) seems like a huge price to pay, especially for something which will still take us days of work to do.

Is there an easier way?

- Myles

Ben

July 10 2012, 01:28AM

ZBoard + Kickstarter + Shopify = :)

I just wish Kickstarter offered some kind of CRM like Shopify does.

www.zboardshop.com

David Hawkins

July 11 2012, 06:39AM

Thank you so much for the info. To spread the love, here are 2 other articles that have helped me. If you have a good product and a large potential audience, these are priceless:

Thank you so much for this article! It’s exactly what I needed for my research.

max

January 01 2013, 03:53PM

My company helps people with kickstarter marketing http://www.shmediamedia.com/kickstarter and I’ll tell you — it’s a lot of fun.

Dave

March 11 2013, 01:34AM

Found this article whilst searching for help with KS marketing – very interesting. I just hope my KS project works as well as some of these did.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/476448910/vacuum-shadows-rpg

Take a look and let me know.

Charlotte Bash

April 01 2013, 01:35AM

Thank you so much for this article! My Kickstarter is up and running now and reading things like this really energizes me :) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/charlottebashep/charlotte-bashs-breakthrough-ep-journey-to-me

Davin

April 25 2013, 03:19PM

Wear Panda was one of the coolest I though. Great concept. I have a buddy who wanted to copy it with his own wood sunglasses company (not restricting himself to just bamboo) but kickstarter no longer accepts wood sunglasses (or any sunglasses?) campaigns anymore… it only took 3 submission rejections for kick starter to let him know.

Walter

June 25 2013, 04:33AM

A fantastic article! I love that we got (bite size) feedback from a range of totally different projects. It goes to show that not ONE way is the right way when it comes to succeeding on Kickstarter.

I thought I’d also share a Kickstarter tool I wrote at www.kickspy.com. It lets you research a list of Kickstarter projects if you’re thinking of starting your own.

For Example:

Let’s say you want to launch a Boardgame project for $20,000. You can check the statistics for all boardgames launched between $15K-$25K

From there we could Google these projects and see if there are any post mortems on what they did right and wrong (like this article). You could also search for backlinks to articles on those projects and search twitter and facebook to see what sort of buzz they were able to get.

Dwight from BackersHub

December 31 2013, 02:03AM

Awesome write up Mike!

Mind if I chime in?

Kickstarter campaign creators should know this:

With their new campaign, they should have a strategy for the following:

a) Getting featured on Kickstarters weekly newsletter and/or becoming the Staff Pick of The Day
b) Using the press effectively, to get your campaign the attention it deserves
c) Getting more Backers to view and/or support your campaign

If they don’t have a strategy for these 3 tactics, they are possibly making 3 BIG mistakes.

Here are 2 resources they can use to get their creative juices running -
•Yancey Stickler, co-founder of Kickstarter, shares his thoughts on How To Get Your Campaign On The Front Page Of Kickstarter. It is a quick video (1:30), give it a listen. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkRlk1Eu8Ps]
•Here is an article I wrote for Entrepreneur.com, highlighting 10 Tips from Successful Campaign Creators. Read the quick comments campaign creators left when asked “What is the 1 tip you have for running a succesful campaign?” [http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229782]

People can learn how to promote their campaign to a targeted list of Hardcore Backers at www.BackersHub.com

My project is to be able to pay to finish my PhD and dissertation. I need time to write and research and not enough money to get through next two years of school. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1237202362/dissertation

amir

December 04 2014, 03:44AM

i want to start project about interior design learning on kickstarter i need help for amazon pay anyone can help please email me or put comment on my website:
http://takhfifgozar.ir/ndetailtakhfif.php?id=20

amir

December 04 2014, 03:46AM

interior design

chiter chicken

May 16 2016, 02:47PM

i want to start a fast food
http://www.chiterpasdaran.ir

Bolivar

June 06 2016, 02:39AM

I’m Bolivar Agata by name. I live in Spain, i want to use this medium to alert all loan seekers to be very careful because there are scammers everywhere.Few months ago I was financially strained, and due to my desperation I was scammed by several online lenders. I had almost lost hope until a friend of mine referred me to a very reliable lender called Mrs.Mary Clark who lend me an unsecured loan of $95,000 under 2hours without any stress. If you are in need of any kind of loan just contact him now via: maryclarkservice1@yahoo.com I‘m using this medium to alert all loan seekers because of the hell I passed through in the hands of those fraudulent lenders. And I don’t wish even my enemy to pass through such hell that I passed through in the hands of those fraudulent online lenders,i will also want you to help me pass this information to others who are also in need of a loan once you have also receive your loan from Mrs.Mary Clark, i pray that God should give her long life.

God bless him forever.

Bolivar Agata

Testimony on how i got my loan

kate norfolk

July 27 2016, 09:15PM

Wow… what a great post! Now we know all pros and cons of the form. Try PDFfiller to fill IRS 14039 here https://goo.gl/tqK93Q. It allows you to to fill out PDF files.

mcao laroh

September 13 2016, 06:49PM

Hello every one,
I am Mcart, a private loan lender who gives life time opportunity loans.. Do you need a loan to pay off your bills and debts? Do you need funds to expand your business? Do you have bad credit card? Have you been rejected by credit union, banks and other financial agencies? So Worry no more, for we are here to render financial assistance to your loan crisis. We offer loan at a very reliable beneficiary low interest rate, we are also certify and accredited by government to issues out financial assistance to those who are in financial crisis. We are reputable, genuine and legitimate loan lender. Our lenders lend on deals from $1,000.00 and upto $50,000,000.00 USD
If interested kindly contact us via email: financialhome34 @ outlook com

I need a loan amount USD THREE Million for my real estate and agriculture business purpose, Loan duration 15 years but Loan should be without any upfront fee, Interested legit Lender can contact via email id- sriharidalai@gmail.com, maabasantidairyfarm@gmail.com

S Pope

August 04 2017, 11:01AM

I have a business plan set in Crete. I intend to buy a piece of land (already found land with building rights) to build four fully equipped apartments specifically catered for disabled people as traveling abroad can be a nightmare for those people in a wheelchair. Their is a one bed roomed villa already on the land allowing for work to get underway immediately once purchased. The villa is ready to have the second story built and the land has 23 producing olive trees.
My goal is to live all year round catering to the needs of disabled people and their carers offering a fully inclusive package deal. With four apartments and a pool, outdoor bbq, and bar and kitchen serving food. this will be a pet friendly site and is enclosed on flat ground.
I have a partner who is a builder, my mother in law and my adult daughter who all want to help as a family run business…….seeking £250,000 investment
I have looked into rentals in this area and during season each apartment would rent out for £800 to £1000 per week and off season between £200 to £400 depending on size on size.

There is a real gap in the market for people with disabilities in this area of the world and with good marketing and advertising could reach 80% full occupancy making annual income of around £121,000 after the first couple of years.
If you area a genuine lender and think this is something you would like to know more about please email me sherrelpope0707@gmail.com

Aaron

September 29 2017, 06:10AM

Great Post and Tips to run a successful Kickstarter project! I learned a lot in here.
As a campaign owner myself, one great tip from me is to reach out to blog owners who would help to promote your campaign, one example is the:

https://www.lildeal.com/kickstarter-projects-you-can-buy-now/

You can contact the owner and get listed on the list.

Osman Ibrahim

November 11 2017, 06:46AM

Do you need a financial help? Are you in any financial crisis or do you need funds to start up your own business? Do you need funds to settle your debt or pay off your bills or start a good business? Do you have a low credit score and you are finding it hard to obtain capital services from local banks and other financial institutes? Here is your chance to obtain a financial services from our company. We offer the following finance to individuals-
*Commercial finance
*Personal finance
*Business finance
*Construction finance
*Business finance And many More:
and many more at 2% interest rate;
Contact Us Via Email:bullsindia187@gmail.com

Hirfa Yee Sing

April 07 2018, 03:26PM

It would have helped a lot if Bolivar had explained how he was scammed. Was he made to pay money upfront when he tried to get loans? Thanks for the response to this question.

Climax

April 30 2018, 11:25AM

ATTN!!!

Dear Sir/Madam, We are private certified loan finance company, offering loan to people who are in need of loan.Debt Consolidation,Business or Personal with 3% loan interest rate per year.We consider Your case irrespective of your bad credit history, the CLIMAX loan and finance will assist you in building your financial problems. All kinds of loans are accessible, If you are interested in obtaining a GUARANTEED cash loan with GUARANTEED APPROVAL. The faster you reply, the faster you will receive that much needed Cash. Contact us now for your urgent loan processing via, Email: info.climaxfinances@gmail.com